


All's Fair In Love And Serial Killing

by WyvernQuill



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: (don't lie you know you did), ...or IS HE!?, Alternate Universe - Police, Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Angst with a Happy Ending, Aziraphale is "just enough of a bastard to be worth knowing" (Good Omens), Crowley and Anathema Device are Friends (Good Omens), Crowley is Really Into the idea of Aziraphale as a killer, Crowley is a Mess (Good Omens), Crowley thinks so at least, Dark Comedy, Detective Inspector Anathema Device, Detective Inspector Crowley, F/M, Footnotes, Getting Together, Humor, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), It's a bit unhealthy, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Pining, Serial Killer Aziraphale, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, Wrote this as a little Halloween fic, but it all works out in the end!, the serial killer/cop AU you all wanted
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 21:42:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21260084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WyvernQuill/pseuds/WyvernQuill
Summary: Detective Inspector Crowley is 99.999 percent sure that Aziraphale Fell is a serial killer.The trouble is only that the remaining 0.001 percent are deeply in love with the man…---In which there is A Murder - rather a lot of them, actually - A Marriage Proposal - just the one - and True Love - whose course runs less not-smooth than it takes a sharp left turn, loops a couple times, and doubles back on itself, before crashing straight into a wall.(Dont mind the metaphor. It still ends well. Promise.)[EDIT 31.10.2020: now with art!]





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween! I wrote this fic on a whim, and of course it escalated.  
Beta'd by the wonderful mixermiz907!  
Mind the tags, while this IS generally humorous, it does deal with serial killing and has some mildly graphic violence and imagery, so please do keep that in mind.  
That said - enjoy!

Crowley peered down at the puddle of blood and the carefully arranged dead body at its centre.

"Oh dear." A soft, measured voice said behind him. "Another one?"

"As if you didn't know.". Crowley growled, shoulders tensing. "Seeing as you're obviously the killer."

Laughter, angelical as any. "Oh, dear boy, again with the accusations!"

Aziraphale Fell, of Fell's Crime Novels And Psychological Dramas, stepped into his field of vision, mindful of the blood, the same picture of prim interest as the last four times he had popped up around murder victims of London's latest serial killer.

"I rather hoped we'd be past that by now?" He asked coyly, batting long lashes, stepping closer.

Crowley placed one hand on his chest, glaring sternly. "Hands behind your head, Fell."

Mr. Fell sighed dramatically, pulling his perfectly manicured fingers from his pockets, and Crowley got to patting him down, rather more roughly than would be proper.*

*Anathema was throwing him a Look. Crowley ignored it.

"And, what did this one do, then?" Fell lightly inclined his head towards the corpse.

"I'm not sharing information about this case with a suspect!" Crowley snapped, roughly patting down thighs and not thinking about how nice and sturdy they were.

An eyebrow was carefully arched.

"...Eric Legion." Crowley muttered. "Killed his two brothers over an avocado last year."

"Gracious!" Aziraphale exclaimed, in the placid manner of one who is fully at peace with violent death. Killer material, Crowley just knew.

This murder was the newest in a long series of snuff films featuring a positively despicable waste of air in the starring role, all dispatched with surgical precision and a very fine dagger Crowley's forensic experts told him was a genuine Victorian antique.

And at every single one, Aziraphale had been present, in his frumpy coat and frumpy vest, smiling calmly throughout any and all questioning and flying off scot-free on the wings of at least three entirely waterproof alibis.

He had the eyes of a killer though. Blue like the merciless sea, and shining with bloodlust. Crowley had seen enough psychopaths in his line of work to recognise the type. Proud of his work, making a play at righteousness, taunting the authorities. Taunting Crowley.

Bastard.

"As if you didn't know exactly why you killed him, _ Angel _." Crowley hissed.

"It's rather detrimental, giving serial killers titles." Aziraphale said conversationally. "Especially such a term as Avenging Angel. Bolsters their confidence, I've read."

"That was the news, not me."

"Oh, but you adapted it, didn't you?"

"Are you admitting you're the Angel?" Crowley scowled up at him.

"Hush you." Aziraphale smiled indulgently, as only a serial killer would smile after being accused of murder. Crowley was onto him.

"Hey Aziraphale." Their forensic scientist, Newton Pulsifer, moved past them. "Prime suspect again?"

"Always, young Newt!" Fell beamed.

"And, Anthony, got anything on him?"

"Yes!" Crowley snapped, checking Fell's coat pockets for the fourth time. "The dagger is hidden on him, I know it is!"

Newt made the kind of sound that made it very clear how much he doubted the presence of any evidence on Aziraphale's person, and wandered off.

There was no dagger.

There was also no gun, no poison, not even a butter knife. No contraband, no-

"A-HAH!" Crowley exclaimed, grabbing Aziraphale's shirt cuff. "What's this!?"

"Jam. I fear." Aziraphale smiled bashfully. "I'm a messy breakfaster."

"NEWT!" Crowley snapped.

Newt wandered over, glancing at the red spot very obvious on Aziraphale's cuff.

Swiped a finger through it.

Stuck it in his mouth.

"Yeah, jam. Sorry, Anthony."

Crowley made a very unhappy sound.

"Right." He grumbled. "Right. Where were you-"

"Selling a complete set of the works of Shakespeare to a rather charming old lady whose contact details I can give you - dear Mrs. Scatterborough is a regular of mine - and ordering a few Penguins from the distributors, whose details you surely still have from last time. I was only walking past here on the way back from the greengrocer, who sadly did not carry my favourite brand of apple."

Aziraphale folded his hands over his stomach. "Will that be it, Inspector?"*

*There was an undertone of something teasing, an unclear heat, in the way he said that, and Crowley felt mildly uncomfortable. Especially in the trouser area.

"Ngk." Crowley garbled, casting his net out for some way to justify keeping Aziraphale in a holding cell. "But-"

"Just let him go, Crowley." Anathema jabbed him in the side. "No reason to keep him here besides you having a crush on-"

"He's a suspect!" Crowley screeched before she could finish her sentence. "Just a suspect!"

He did not have a crush on Aziraphale Fell. Aziraphale Fell was a serial killer. One did not crush on serial killers.

Not even if they had murderous blue eyes and golden curls that somehow never shed onto crime scenes. Or a gorgeously plump body that never should've gotten out of this alley through any of the four possible escape routes that didn't lead past CCTV.

Serial killer. NO.

"I hope to see you again soon, Inspector." Aziraphale winked. Winked! The cheek of that murderous, terrible…

"Hng." Crowley growled back, and very nearly gave in to the temptation to kick the corpse.

Bastard killed family over a bloody fruit, deep down Crowley thought he'd deserve it.

* * *

"How did you do it!" Crowley snarled. "HOW!"

"Dear Inspector, think of your blood pressure." Aziraphale blinked placidly, clearly not minding being slammed against a wall in the least. "Done what, precisely?"

Crowley gestured wordlessly at the heap of slime DNA testing identified as Ligur Chamelo, avid collector of human limbs.

"Oh my." Aziraphale's eyes widened in a mockery of surprise. "Acid is a terrible way to go, wouldn't you-"

"Acid!" Crowley leant in even closer. Their noses touched. "How do you know it was acid!?"

"Dear boy, I _ read _." Aziraphale sniffed, as if frankly insulted by the question alone. "You do recall that I am in the business of peddling thrillers?"

"When you're not _ serial killing _, yeah!"

"My good man, sometimes I despair of you..."

"Use protection!" Anathema shouted behind them.

Crowley ignored her, which was how one best dealt with Anathema Device, in his experience, and did not let his eyes stray from Aziraphale's in the least.

Aziraphale had rather pretty lips, too. Far too pretty to be attached to a heinous murderer, really.

* * *

Crowley slid into the bookshop the way he would into the den of a crime lord, back always to the wall and hackles raised so high they nearly reached the back of his knees.

"Inspector!" Aziraphale set aside the novel he'd been perusing, which featured a large and terribly realistic bloodstain on the cover. "Would you like one of these? It's a new release, absolutely fantastic."

"I don't read books." Crowley snapped. "I'm here for you."

"Oh, how scandalous." Aziraphale smirked only the teeniest, tiniest bit. "Are you sure you'd not like to try this one? Delightfully detailed in its descriptions."

Crowley raised one eyebrow. "Enjoy graphic murders, do you, Fell? Any books here you... draw inspiration from?"

"Why, really, my dear." Aziraphale's eyes twinkled. "I do enjoy a good detective novel or thriller, certainly. Many of my friends enjoy beef sausage, and they've yet to slaughter a cow. Interest in something does not necessarily correlate with a drive towards becoming personally involved, you should know."

Crowley scowled. Mulled that over in his head.

Scowled harder.

"You killed them." He hissed, leaning over the counter. "Legion, Chamelo, and all the rest.* And one day, I'll prove it."

*Notably Dagon Moray, who committed life insurance fraud by killing select men and impersonating their grieving widows, and Hastur La Vista, the man who had murdered the American ambassador.

"Know what, dear Inspector?"

"What?"

"Take it, it's on the house." Aziraphale slid the book over the counter. "Do please enjoy."

Crowley said a very rude word, and stormed out of the bookshop.

The next day, a parcel arrived at his door, lovingly gift-wrapped, containing a book with a realistic bloodstain and a card that said, in frankly astonishingly neat cursive, _ in case you are in want of inspiration, dear Inspector: pg. 68. _

The book just so happened to contain a rather explicit gay sex scene amidst the murders, starting precisely 68 pages after the first.

(NOT that Crowley had read it, or anything.)

* * *

"It's him."

"It's not him."

"It is so!"

"Is not. Have another."

Crowley grumbled, and downed his pint.

He had imbibed just about enough alcohol to hit that sweet spot between his inhibitions loosening enough to garbled about the Avenging Angel and Aziraphale, but not yet sloshed enough to be incomprehensible, and his colleagues were clearly attempting to push him over the brink into the latter state.

Unprofessional, was what it was.

Crowley had 100%-absolutely-definitely well-founded suspicions, and they all ignored him!

Well.

One day, he would catch Aziraphale Fell, Angel of London, modern-day righteous Jack The Ripper, in flagrante delicto, and then, then!

Then they'd all see.

"And I tell you," he slurred, slamming the pint to the table. "He, he had 'nough time. Jus', if he takes a cab at Bond street, and, and, with the, the remote control…"

"Have. Another." Anathema insisted, placing a new pint in front of him.

Looking on the bright side, Crowley hadn't had to pay for his drinks in over a month.

* * *

"I know why you're always at the crime scenes instead of making a clean getaway." Crowley said casually, crouching over the earthly remains of Samuel Sandalphon, whose crimes had been many and varied, most prominently that thing with the salt. Crowley still shuddered at the memory.

"Oh?" Aziraphale asked mildly, sipping his tea.*

*Sandalphon had been murdered basically on the front steps on his bookshop, a quaint little affair with far too many books for its spacial confines, so Aziraphale had come out and brought them all tea and biscuits.

"It's about me." Crowley stated triumphantly. "I am the Holmes to your Moriarty!"

"The Doctor to his Master." Newt added most unhelpfully.

"That's not-"

"Harry to his Draco." Anathema chimed in, grinning wickedly.

"Erngkkk…"

"Father Brown to my Flambeau?" Aziraphale suggested innocently.

Three puzzled pairs of eyes blinked at him.

"Oh, have _ none _ of you ever read Chesterton!?" Aziraphale huffed, and it was the closest Crowley had ever seen him to genuinely annoyed. "It's quite good, I have a collected edition at a discount-"

"Never you mind that!" Crowley interrupted him impatiently. Aziraphale could advertise to his underlings later. "It's about the mortal nemesis aspect of it all, is what I mean to say. Like any serial killer-"

A chorus of groans around him.

"LIKE ANY SERIAL KILLER," Crowley continued at a substantially higher volume to drown out the non-believers, "you have a pathological need to gloat, if not the desire to get caught. And you can't do it anonymously. You need the personal touch, the focused hatred of the individual. That's me."

"You've caught me out." Aziraphale sighed dramatically, rolling his eyes. "Yes, you insufferable nan, it is all about you…"

"HAH!" Crowley exclaimed triumphantly.

"...though I fear our definitions of personal touch vary." Aziraphale batted his eyelashes teasingly. Crowley was suddenly very warm.

"What?" Crowley squeaked.

"What." He repeated, in the kind of calm, measured voice of a man who was fully in control, yes he was.

"Must I spell it out?" An amused sigh that rather pretended to be long-suffering. "I do not wish to be dragged down to the station, but would not object to some… more intimate cross-examinations from you _ personally _, Inspector Crowley."

"Ngkkkkfshwah." Crowley sputtered.

"Quite." Aziraphale beamed. "The Ritz, tomorrow, 9 o'clock?"

"HAH?"

"Lovely. I will be seeing you then."

And with those words, Aziraphale Fell, most dangerous and deranged killer this side of the Ripper, leaned over a pile of mortal remains still lightly oozing, and pecked Crowley on the cheek.

Someone in the background murmured "finally…"

Crowley couldn't be arsed to care.

* * *

"Well, obviously you're not going." Anathema sipped her vile neon-coloured concoction with the air of a bored socialite who has heard this gossip thrice before.

"_ He's a serial killer, Anathema! _ " She said in a gruff, low-pitched voice that did not sound like Crowley at all, thank you very much. " _ Shouldn't be on the crime scene, Anathema! Is psychologically torturing us all, Anathema! Don't go near him, he might break character any moment, Anathema! _"

"I don't sound like that, Anathema!" Crowley hissed, sounding very much like that. "And… and besides, let's not be, uh, hasty. I could. Gather intel. At dinner. With him."

"You mean on your date." Anathema said dryly.

"It won't be a date!" Crowley argued hastily. "I'll just be eating in the same room as him. Talking. Trying to gauge the depths of his depravity. Nothing whatsoever will happen, I'll be home by ten, and with enough evidence to finally put him behind bars."

Anathema hummed, taking another sip. "Can I have that in writing?"

"You can." Crowley puffed himself up, full of bravado and cheap alcohol. "I'll sign it too, if you'd like. NOTHING will happen."

* * *

Anathema was sitting at her desk when Crowley limped in, wearing the same clothes as the day before (only substantially more wrinkled) and a blissed-out expression.

She discreetly pushed a cup of Yard's Finest* across their shared desk, with a napkin clumsily signed "Anothy I. Cowwely", while he was preoccupied with sitting down quite slowly.

*A dark roast strong enough to burn through the cups on a regular basis, unless they were lined with the only material capable of withstanding any corrosive substance on earth (and quite a few alien ones): biscuits from the Yard's communal tin.

"So, how was it?"

"Hmm?" Crowley blinked the residue of a frankly fantastic shag from his mind. "Was what?"

"Your date." Anathema clarified flatly. "And the sex after."

Crowley choked on his coffee. "Bit blunt today, are we?"

Anathema smiled with entirely too many teeth. "Crowley dear, if I'd been blunt, I'd have asked why you're walking bowlegged in yesterday's skinny jeans. This is _ tactful _. Now spill."

"Nothing happened?" Crowley lied, like a lying liar who lies.

"I have trouble believing that for some reason." Anathema rolled her eyes. "Not that I can blame you, mind. The man bought you dinner at the Ritz for a _ first date _ \- that's a 10th anniversary kind of joint, you know - it only makes sense you'd put out."

"We. Hng." Crowley flushed. Darkly.

"Oh, this is gonna be good, isn't it?" Anathema rubbed her hands together with visible glee.

"We. Might've left. Before the aperitif arrived." Crowley muttered weakly. "Though, er, he made me breakfast in bed to make up for it…?"

"Bloody Hell," Anathema whistled. "Aren't you a cheap date…"

Crowley considered pointing out how helpless he'd been in the face of Aziraphale Fell in a suit as sharp as his murder weapon - complete with blood-red bowtie - but offence was the best defence.

"Didn't you shag Newt in the supply closet within an hour of meeting him?" Crowley countered sharply.

"That's different," Anathema shrugged. "That's true love."

Crowley opened his mouth to say something most unwise he would most likely regret as soon as he voiced it (but would know in his heart to be true.)

"AND there's no suspicion of serial killing involved."

That shut Crowley up.

Right. The plan. Murder charges. Evidence.

"W-well. Ngk." He stuttered. "This is just… just phase two of my plan. Obviously. Gain his trust. Get unsupervised access to his flat above the bookshop. Find evidence."

"That's _ glaringly _ unethical, you do realise that, don't you?"

Crowley winced.

"Look. I promise you, _ really _ promise you…"

Anathema raised a dubious eyebrow, and clicked the recording device on their desk into whirring action.

"Why are you-"

"So I can play this back when you inevitably break said promise. Please, do go on."

Crowley glared at her.

"This was-"

"Into the mic, please."

"This was just sex. It was. Just sex."*

*Entirely unrelated, is the Esteemed Reader aware of the way people will repeat themselves when frantically attempting to convince themselves of something they know is untrue?

"He's a serial killer after a- your face will get stuck like that, did you know? He's a serial killer, a real threat, and I know I ought to have been more careful, not gone home with him. Well, I'm setting myself boundaries now: I'll get the evidence I need, and then break it off immediately. Won't last longer than a week, I promise. I won't go in deeper than I already have."*

*By the look of that limp, it had been Aziraphale who'd been _ "in deep" _, but that was entirely besides the point.

Crowley huffed a little laugh.

"I'm certainly not going to go ring-shopping for him, or anything like that.

He is a serial killer, after all."

* * *

Anathema clicked the recording off, and stared at Crowley with the kind of look that said "you know EXACTLY what you've done wrong, now grovel and regret".

Crowley studiously refused to acknowledge her, instead inspecting the jewelry display before him.

_ "Crowley _."

"Nnngkshutup." Crowley forced out. "And help me pick."

_"Anthony Jacqueline* Crowley,_ _I SWEAR TO GOD-"_

*This was naturally not Crowley's true middle name - nobody knew that, there was a betting pool at the Yard and everything - but that did not mean Anathema didn't give it a good guess now and then.

Anathema visibly deflated, and looked like she was having a frankly terrible headache.

"The gold ring with the sapphire. Goes with his eyes." She muttered.

"And I'm playing that recording again at the reception, you hear?"

* * *

"Well, this rather explains why you couldn't make dinner". Aziraphale toyed with the "police line - do not cross" barricade tape. "Why, I do think I recognise this one! She was in the papers yesterday, remember, my dear?"

"Yeah." Crowley sighed frustratedly. Reservation and all his proposal plans ground to dust under the corpse of Michael Heavenworth, who had been a killer-for-hire that drowned her victims in their bathtubs. Aziraphale might've been considerate, and not murdered her right on their half-year anniversary, bloody hell!

"One must appreciate the handiwork, mustn't one. Seems to me like she drowned in her own blood." Aziraphale added casually. "Poetic justice, in a morbid sort of way."

Crowley stared at him.

Aziraphale's ice-blue eyes twinkled. The bastard was taunting him.

God, Crowley loved* him sometimes.

*LOATHED! That's what he'd meant to think! LOATHED, not loved, and the Esteemed Editors better correct that before publishing, oughtn't they?

Without further ado, Crowley dropped to his knees - not in the blood, he made sure of that, though his trousers would nonetheless need a wash - and pulled out the ring.

"Ange- Aziraphale, I… I had plans for dinner, a speech, but… will you marry me?"

For the first time since they had met, Aziraphale seemed truly, fully befuddled, eyes skipping from Crowley's face, to the ring, Crowley again, to the fellow officers and forensic analysts pretending they weren't gaping at them.

"Unless, you know," Crowley added innocently, "unless you're really a serial killer. Then, of course…"

He trailed off, expectantly.

The Avenging Angel would never marry him. Too much risk of detection; their half-year fling, this game they were playing, Aziraphale wouldn't let it go this far. Any moment now, caught unawares as he was, he would blurt out "no! I can't!", lash out with his dagger and reveal his true nature, and Crowley would've finally, FINALLY won.*

*Well. He was sure it would feel like winning when the time came. At the moment, imagining it only gave him a heavy, painfully lump-y feeling in his chest.

"Oh, darling." Aziraphale breathed, softly.

_ Now. _

Aziraphale lunged forward, ripping through the tape, and…

...and dropped to his knees in front of Crowley, embracing him tightly, and laughing "yes! Yes, of course yes, a thousand times yes!" into his mouth.

Crowley kissed back, to the resounding chorus of "aawwwwww!"s, and tried to ignore how curiously relieved he felt over Aziraphale calling his bluff.

* * *

Anathema slammed a coffee down on Crowley's desk with unnecessary force.

There were rather more of Crowley's colleagues gathered behind her than a coffee run warranted, and rather more crossed arms and judging expressions that anything Crowley could recall doing recently warranted.*

*Well. Except for that thing with the crocodiles he'd done to prank Sergeants Neil and Terry, but that had all been good fun, honest.

"Hng?" He inquired, and downed half the cup in one great gulp, after which he felt like a slightly more verbose "how can I help you, ladies and gentlemen?" was doable.

"This. Is an intervention." Anathema stated firmly.

Newt nodded beside her in silent, mildly-intimidated supportiveness, which was what he usually exhibited in a furious Anathema's presence.

"A what?" Crowley sputtered through his second mouthful of caffeine.

"Well, it can't go on like this, can it?" Junior Constable Young from the T.H.E.M. division stated. "Right, Dog?"

Dog, leading K-9 officer, barked.

"Can't what go on like what?"*

*Even if Crowley had regained the power of speech, logical thinking evidently still evaded him.

"The "I'm gonna marry a serial killer" situation, Crowley!" Anathema burst out. "The fact that you are fully prepared to stand at the altar with a man you believe to be our prime suspect in eleven murders!"

"Two-ande-ten, actualley!" Chief Superintendent Nutter shouted over from her office.* "When thou art done here, get thee to the cryme scene!"

*Somehow, the woman had an uncanny knack for knowing what people were talking about even if there was no possible way she could've overheard - and a very strange accent to boot.

Everybody groaned.

"Well." Crowley said slowly. "He's… he's not convicted of anything - yet - is he?"

Everybody groaned louder.

"OBVIOUSLY he's not!" Junior Constable Pepper exclaimed. "The man is innocent - and that's a rare thing, for men."

"Aziraphale Fell is an absolute sweetheart!" Sergeant Hodges added cheerfully. "Such a dear! Sends cupcakes over regularly, makes the best tea - oh! And he congratulated me and Ethel to our wedding anniversary - even remembered the exact date without me telling him, isn't that wonderful? You've made a good choice there, Anthony, very good choice. Why, only the other day I said, to Ethel I said-"

"Thank you, Mary, that'll do." Anathema interrupted her chatter. "The point is, Crowley, of course he's not convicted. He never will be. Nobody here believes he's a serial killer, or that you have anything, anything at all, to fear from him, nobody…

Except - and that is the problem - you."

Crowley blinked slowly.

Took off his sunglasses.*

*Some conversations - very rarely - warranted the taking off of sunglasses to mask the fact that one of the conversationalists involved was rather tempted to voice a rather cruder version of "what the fudge?"

"You've got to realise how unhealthy this is!" Anathema continued. "He's definitely not a serial killer, and you- no genetic material of him at any crime scene, no motive, perfect alibis, the profilers all agree that he _ would never, _ even our _ one _ eyewitness report describes a man of entirely different stature!"

"I told you a thousand times, she was lying to protect-"

"Oh, listen to yourself! He's just a normal man, a man who _ loves _ you. We're imploring you, Crowley. Close his file. Give up on this insanity."

Her eyes were round and pleading.

"Fall in love with the man, not the killer. He's wonderful, and you two have been so happy. Please, Crowley, for your own sake as much as his."

Crowley swallowed.

"I'll close his file," he said hoarsely.

"WHEN," Crowley raised one finger before the relief could fully spread over the assembled officers' faces, "when - and not a moment sooner - he's proven guilty."

"You mean not guilty?" Newt added in an attempt to be helpful.

"Eh." Crowley shrugged. "Same difference."

"Right." Anathema frowned. "Right."

"Crime scene?" Crowley pushed himself up from his chair, already pushing the conversation to the most distant vestibule of his mind.

"This conversation isn't over, Crowley!" She shouted after him.

It was on his end.

* * *

The thing was, Crowley had, secretly, silently, always thought the Avenging Angel was onto something - and he wasn't alone in that regard.

Public opinion was skewed heavily in the direction of "if we've got a serial killer killing in series, at least this guy is choosing the right victims", and, well.

It wasn't hard to see why.

The only eyewitness account they had was that of Eve Gardener, widow to Adam Gardener, who had spontaneously decided that his highly pregnant second wife should succumb to the same "mysterious circumstances" as his first.

Crowley had seen her on the news, clutching her newborn, flinching at loud sounds and telling them all about the tall, dark stranger swooping in "like an avenging angel, with a flaming sword in his hand," and stabbing her husband in the back just as she'd been about to lose consciousness.

The media had eaten it up, and so had the public.

(Crowley had interviewed her. Golden hair, he'd asked, and no, Eve insisted. Blue eyes, no. Generous build, no.

Eve described a muscular, dark-haired man whose eye colour she had not seen, who did not resemble Aziraphale in any shape, way, or form.

So, obviously, Crowley was convinced she was lying, no matter what the polygraph said.)

But vigilante justice was no true justice, Crowley knew. It said so in the handbooks, and in all his lectures at the police academy. And the Avenging Angel didn't merely act out of the goodness of his heart, that at least was quite obvious. That was the work of one who enjoyed killing, enjoyed evading the grasp of the authorities, the heady thrill of it all…

Aziraphale - because the Angel was Aziraphale, had to be Aziraphale - was merely indulging a hobby in the way that was least harmful to those surrounding him, the same way he ate from Crowley's biscuit tins, but only the powdered sugar ones Crowley couldn't stomach anyway.

He was a sick, sneaky bastard, and Crowley dreamed of the day he would finally catch him in the act, blood everywhere, and that calm, gently threatening smile…

Usually, when Crowley's train of thought got this far, it was taken over by a sudden, inexplicable need to excuse himself and… well. He was a healthy male. These things happened randomly sometimes, with absolutely no correlation to what manner of thoughts he'd been exploring when things suddenly… stood to attention.

And curse Anathema for ever implying otherwise.*

*Her exact words had been "you're just getting a murderer-boner," which was... wrong on multiple levels.

OBVIOUSLY.

* * *

Crowley surveyed the crime scene.

"So, who'd he kill this time?" He asked.

"Bezel Bub." Anathema responded immediately.

"Doesn't ring a bell."

"It wouldn't. Extremely careful in their operations, but… basically head of the London Mafia."

Crowley blinked. "Didn't know London has a mafia."

"Neither did any of us, until ten minutes ago." Anathema shrugged. "Makes it somewhat high-priority, as you can imagine."

"Huh." Crowley peered down at the not-so-neatly-dispatched body of the deceptively petite ex-head of London's underworld. "Must've put up a hell of a fight."

The lethal cuts were messier than normally, and Bezel's face was distorted in a grimace of… of…

Crowley snatched a plastic glove straight from Newt's hands - a weak "oi!" was voiced, but no substantial protest was forthcoming.*

*Newt was the kind of pushover who was made up exclusively of meek nods and soft underbelly he was perpetually offering. Figured that Anathema had gotten her fangs into him, that sadistic witch.

(Crowley had once suggested she get a dog instead, if she liked her companions submissive and puppy-eyed. He still had the scars...)

Properly gloved, he leaned over the corpse, and pried Bezel's jaw open.

"They bit their attacker!" He breathed. "Look!"

Anathema let out a very uncouth word, but in the kind of way that was meant to signal disbelieving delight rather than frustration.

Bezel Bub, Satan rest them, had clearly had the jaw muscles of a shark, and wickedly sharp teeth that had more than enough genetic material caught between them for DNA identification, and then some.

"Well, I'll be damned." Anathema scratched her head, while Newt was bustling to scrape blood and skin into a suitable container for examination. "That easy in the end, is it?"

"He got sloppy. They all do, eventually." Crowley pulled the glove off with a loud snap. "One mistake, and that's it. Bugger's behind bars, just like that."

"Hmm." Anathema shoved her hands into her pockets. "Where's Aziraphale, by the way? He usually shows up, doesn't he?"

"For my money, he's cleaning up a bite wound." Crowley said pointedly; but, strangely, his heart wasn't as in it as it usually would have been.

* * *

"Here." Anathema tossed a lab report onto his desk.* "Read it."

*Crowley had felt strangely queasy after the crime scene visit, and opted for going back to the Yard and catch up on some paperwork - and if he spent much too long staring at Aziraphale's suspect file, we'll, that was his business, and his alone.

"I don't n-need to read it." Crowley said brusquely. Swallowed hard. "I already know what it'll say - and I've known from the beginning."

"You haven't. You really, really haven't." Anathema pushed the report closer. "Come on."

Crowley rolled his eyes.

Flipped the file open.

"See, told you so!" He sneered. "Azira-"

He paused.

Reread the name noted in steady computer typeface.

"...what now."

It was not Aziraphale's.

It.

It was not.

Aziraphale wasn't...

"Gabriel Erzengels." Crowley read out numbly. "Financial manager, 53. Works at the Caelum holding company."

Crowley wanted to scream. To laugh, to cry, maybe throw up a little.

"It all matches up." Anathema piled another stack of papers onto his desk. "Narcissistic nature, superiority complex. His tagline is apparently "For The Good Of The Company", an attitude which he's used to ruthlessly throw anyone under the bus who didn't measure up to his standards."

A newspaper article. _ It was for the best, says financial manager G. Erzengels. Someone has to do the dirty work, and that someone is me _.

"He collects antique weaponry."

A photograph of a wall plastered with various swords, daggers, battle axes, and one singular spoon.*

*Rumoured to have been in the possession of Dread Pirate Gustav, who had had terrible trouble with his letters, and misread the word "cutlass" as "cutlery".

"His name translates to archangel. Literally. And he fits Eve Gardener's description."

Another photograph. Gabriel, tall and broadshouldered, muscular in an overbearing sort of way, and smiling as if he intended to blind someone with his teeth.*

*Crowley was suddenly quite glad he was wearing sunglasses.

His eyes were an unnatural purple, and colder and emptier than Aziraphale's had ever been, only surpassed by that deranged, frozen smile warping his face out of shape.

Gabriel Erzengels might've been what people called "conventionally attractive", but Crowley looked at him and thought "why, must be the ugliest little bugger I've ever seen."

"And he has no alibis!" Anathema continued. "None, not for any of the murders! This is our man, Crowley. It must be."

Crowley made a weak sound in his throat.

"We're going to head out to his apartment now. Figured you'd want to lead the arrest, you've been obsessing over this case for half a year, after all."

Half a year. The anniversary, the proposal. The first murder, Aziraphale clucking and cooing over Eve Gardener, and Crowley dragging him off to the station to be interviewed first chance he got.

Had it been so long?

(And hadn't it been too little time?)

"I don't think…" Crowley swallowed. "Don't feel great. I'll stay behind, don't mind, really. Very humble, me, don't need all that fuss of making the big arrest. It's fine, it'll do your career good."

Anathema frowned.

Leaned in close.

"Are you alright, Crowley?" She asked gently. "I understand, this is a big shock for-"

"Perfectly fine!" Crowley squeaked, at least two registers higher than what would've preserved his dignity. "Peachy."*

*Reality was rather more pear-shaped, but there was something Anathema, being American as she was, would never understand: Crowley was a Brit, and Brits carried on, even if their world turned unexpectedly upside-down.

(At which point they would merely hold their teacups the other way around, and make remarks about the weather - mostly how the rain was falling in the wrong direction.)

"If you say so." Anathema bit her lip. "Sure you won't come?"

"Nah. I'll be fine here with…" Crowley squinted. "Form 10b delta."

"You're holding it the wrong way around."

"That's a sign of how fine I am with it. I don't demand from it to stick to the spatial orientation most convenient to me. In fact, I'm being supportive! Are you respecting your paperwork's life choices, Anathema?"*

*Crowley, as the Esteemed Reader will surely notice, had a tendency to babble when unsettled, and accusatory when defensive.

"I'll tell you all about it when it's done." Anathema muttered, throwing him a last concerned look. "Might end up late though. Promise me you'll go home early?"

Crowley grunted, and turned back to the form - though not before putting it the right way up.

* * *

"-probably tipped off." Anathema's voice crackled slightly through the phone's speakers. "We're staking the place out, but don't think he'll come home tonight. Probably halfway to the Bahamas or something."

Crowley nodded, realised she couldn't see that, and grunted assent.

"...are you still at the Yard, Crowley?"

Crowley glanced around, observing the empty, darkened office in which the light on his desk was the last bastion of illumination.

"No, I'm home." Crowley said.

Silence on Anathema's end.

The landline rung.

"A-hah!" She exclaimed triumphantly, and there were sounds indicative of her handing Newt's phone back to him. "Anthony Jolyne Crowley, I'm very disappointed."

"Why!?" Crowley complained. "I'm doing all the paperwork you hate! I'm a loving, helpful colleague, aren't I, and you're lucky to have me."

"Know what, I do think I am." Anathema said, and Crowley squirmed at the honesty in her voice.*

*Crowley and Anathema went way back, to when Crowley had been only a Detective Constable and Anathema a trainee freshly transferred from the States.

There had been a case involving balloon animals, a murderous clown, and a monkey on nitrous oxide; and some things you simply couldn't experience together without becoming somewhat attached to each other.

"Have you closed Aziraphale's file yet?"

"Huh? Nuh."

"Maybe you ought to." Anathema suggested gently. "It might help."

"Uh."

A bit of silence.

"Well, night then, Crowley. Look after yourself, yeah?"

"Sure. Have fun on your stakeout."

"Fun? I'll freeze my ass off, is what I'll do!"

"Whatever floats your boat, Anathema. Ciao."

* * *

Crowley sat in front of Aziraphale's closed file for a long time, fighting some uncertain, jittery dread at the very core of his being.

Crowley opened the file, and stared at it for an even longer time.

Pictures, sketches of Aziraphale, files and reports and transcripts adored with coffee rings and the occasional smudge of unidentifiable takeout; forensic evidence, research into antique stores that carried daggers in a three-mile radius of the bookshop, countless witness statements confirming an alibi or other. Crowley had been meticulous.

And somewhere beneath all that, a scribbled list describing how the suspect took his tea (milk, no sugar), his favourite pastry (macaroons) the way his eyes creased when he smiled, and how gently he loved in the dark of night.*

*There was also a footnote containing only a select number of inches, and we leave the Esteemed Reader to speculate what said number specifies.

Crowley sighed.

Picked up a pen.

_ Cleared of all suspicion _, he wrote, and placed the sticky note solemnly on top of the stack of papers before closing the file for the last time.

He tried to think of the man he would be chasing now, this middle-management-type with his too-wide grin and empty, dull eyes, and shuddered.

Crowley's mobile rang.*

*_ Killer Queen _. He would have to change that, wouldn't he.

He meant to pick up. He really did.

But he couldn't.

Aziraphale's profile picture on his phone was the same as the one in the now-closed file, him smirking sideways at the camera, eyes glittering with barely suppressed malice.

Looking at it again, Crowley was beginning to realise that, maybe, just maybe, it was more of a warm, gentle smile, after all.

The call rang out.

Aziraphale would be worrying about him, by now. Crowley usually sent a text if he couldn't answer the phone..

Aziraphale, worried. Aziraphale, a normal man who loved him.

Aziraphale Fell, who was not and had never been a serial killer. Who merely loved to read of violent crime, and had never murdered as much as a fly. A sardonic nature that was nonetheless calmly kind above all, an angel who would never dream of avenging, a perfectly normal man who was soon going to be a perfectly normal husband.

What a lovely, reassuring thought, a certainty that would surely warm anyone's heart.

Crowley shuddered again.

This part of the Yard was terribly cold and empty after hours. He wondered why, in all the years of overtime and over-overtime, he'd never really noticed it before.

* * *

Crowley was loitering in front of the map of London on the wall, idly sticking pins into it at random.*

*Sergeant Shadwell would be furious with him for messing with it, but the man used it primarily to mark the gathering places of teenage gangs he called "t'covens of vile witches an' wizards", and nobody at the Yard took that at all seriously.

(Except old Milkbottle, God rest him. Such a tragedy.)

His phone buzzed.

_ 1 new message from: Angel _

Overtime again, dearest? See that you come home before midnight, this time. I miss you.

Love, A.Z.Fell*

*Aziraphale always signed his texts, and if that wasn't the mark of a psychopath, then goodness gracious, _what_ _was!?_

(P.S. Anathema, dear, if you stole his telephone again, do remind him that we have some Châteauneuf-du-Pape set aside for this evening, yes? And give my best to Newt.)

Crowley's finger hovered over the reply button.

This was good. This was fine. His husband-to-be was not a serial killer, was waiting for him at home with the promise of excellent wine and an even better shag. Great. Hooray.

_ What was wrong with him!? _

(Because something was wrong. Really, strangely, terribly wrong. He could feel it biting at his brain, chomping away through neurons, an itching sensation just past…)

Crowley's eyes slid away from the phone, and towards the map.

His subconscious, wily thing that it was, had placed the pins on locations he could list in his sleep - the sites where the Angel's victims had been discovered.

Crowley frowned.

Added another pin on the alley where they'd found Bezel.

Hesitated.

Plucked the ones marking Aziraphale's bookstore and other usual haunts away, and stuck them into Gabriel Erzengels' apartment and office.

Stared.

And suddenly, Crowley's eyes widened.

He scrambled for his coat, and then the room was devoid of life all of a sudden, only a single desk lamp near the map ominously flickering.

* * *

_ 1 new message from: Inspector♡ _

B right home, jst need 2 follow up on smthng.

Love U

* * *

The thing was, the Avenging Angel only very rarely killed his victims where they were found - in fact, he only ever had with the first one.

Hence, there had to be some base of operations, at a comfortable distance both from his home and the places the bodies were found - and for all of Crowley's tries, he'd never been able to find it.

Except, now that the parameters had changed, and conditions were entirely different…

Crowley pushed open the creaking door of the abandoned church, carefully, oh so carefully, and stepped inside.

He was probably wrong. In fact, he was most likely wrong.

But, just on the off-chance he was not. That the Avenging Angel* was indeed here…

*Crowley couldn't think of the man as Gabriel. He _ couldn't _.

He only wanted to see him once. Just confirm that this was real, not just a brilliant, brilliant diversion of Aziraphale's.

He NEEDED to see Gabriel Erzengels with his own two eyes, dagger in his hand, needed _ something, ANYTHING _to give him closure.

Crowley slid through the darkness behind the pews, squinting through the dust and ash in the air.

The church - a suspected meeting place of Nazi agents - had partially burnt down in the Blitz, from what Crowley's quick Google search had unearthed, and was never quite rebuilt in the decades to follow. Nobody quite knew who owned the property anymore, and the CoE certainly didn't make any claim on it.

Thick walls that let no sound pass, disinterested neighbourhood, and an exit shrouded in darkness.

In other words, a perfect hideout for a serial killer.

Something made a wet sound under Crowley's leather boots.*

*Snakeskin pattern, which was NOT tacky, no matter what Anathema said. Or Aziraphale. The man was- _ wasn't _ a serial killer, but had been suspected of being one, at least; so his fashion opinion hardly mattered, now, did it.

Blood. Fresh, or nearly so, coagulating only ever so slightly.

_ "Shit." _ Crowley whispered.

He'd been right.

It suddenly seemed like a very, very bad decision, to have come here with neither backup nor a firearm.

A clattering sound.

Crowley froze.

Glanced around himself.

No. No, that had _ not _ been him.

Oh, _ bugger. _

One of the shadows behind the eagle statue suddenly peeled itself from the wall, making for the exit.

Reflex forced a "STOP! IN THE NAME OF THE LAW!" out of Crowley's mouth, even though it made his common sense facepalm.

The shadow froze.

Crowley's legs moved without input from him - sort of like what his hips did most of the time - and before he knew it, he'd cut off the shadows way to the exit, a rusted tyre iron inexplicably found among the debris clutched in his hand.

The other skittered to a halt, ash rising in a cloud between them. The sharp flash of a dagger in the dark.

A beat.

Crowley lunged, the shadow dodged, and then he was in hot pursuit, eyes tearing from the ash and the dust and tears mixing with sweat on his face, vaulting over a pew, around the altar, and then…

The belltower. Crowley had him cornered.

"Come on." He taunted between pants and huffs of air, gripping the tyre iron tightly. "_ Make my day. _"

The shadow turned.

And, you know, it was funny.

Even then, after all that evidence, after closing the file, after everything, part of Crowley had somehow still expected to find _ Aziraphale _ in that empty, burned-out husk of a church.

So, when hard purple eyes met his, surprise froze him in place, for just a second.

But that second was enough for Gabriel Erzengels to deliver the kind of mean right hook that knocked your brain right out of your ear.

Crowley fell to the ground, and knew no more.

* * *

Rope.

Wrists.

Hurt. Head. Hurt.

World wavering, tilting, like a drunken sailor singing sea shanties as he was stumbling across deck during a tropical storm, over-balancing, throwing his arms out, but the waves were already washing over him…

Water splashed into Crowley's face, and suddenly he was wide awake - and had "Blow The Man Down" stuck in his head.

"Awake, sunshine?" A voice sneered.

Crowley glared up at Gabriel Erzengels, and had never hated a man more.*

*He stood like someone who was used to getting attention, and ready to take it by force if nobody volunteered it; built like a Greek God in only the worst of ways.

And the smile.

_ That smile. _

Crowley wanted to shatter those obnoxiously white teeth more than he'd ever wanted to do anything else in his life.

"The building is surrounded." Crowley attempted to bluff.

He only got around to the first syllable when a pain along his cheekbone cut him off. Bloody financial managers spending half their bloody time at the bloody gym just so they could beat unsuspecting Detective Inspectors bloody.

He repeated himself.

(It bloody hurt.)

"Ah, don't make me laugh!" American accent. Ghastly. Not like Aziraphale's lovely posh murmurs. This Gabriel fellow had no style. "You're alone, copper."

_ Copper. _ A far cry from the much more distinguished "Inspector.

"So it seems." Crowley could do this. Crowley could be smooth, bide his time. Crowley had seen every single James Bond movie at least twice, he was a badass spy in all but name.*

*If he was to die, he would at least do it in a Cool(™) manner.

Anathema would hopefully see to it that it was noted on his gravestone, "went out like a hero and did not wet himself in his last moments at all".

"So. You're the Avenging Angel." Killers liked to talk about themselves. Monologue. At least the likes of the Angel did.

"Sure." A winning grin. "That's me alright."

"Hm." Crowley said.*

*Now, the Esteemed Reader ought to know that, sometimes, "hm" is the single most devastatingly insulting thing one can say. It implies the presence of no other responses, nothing that could possibly be said about something neither especially impressive nor particularly heinous, something that only really excelled in its sheer, mediocre hm-ness.

And, for the likes of Gabriel, who called everything that didn't burn the company down "excellent", it was a punch so far below the belt it near as took out his kneecaps.

Purple eyes hardened into wickedly sharp pieces of amethyst. "You got a problem with that?"

"No. No, no. No." Crowley would've held up his hands in a pacifying gesture - not least because the dagger had made an appearance - but regrettably they were bound behind his back. "Just, I always imagined you to be more…"

_ Dashing. Mysterious. Fascinating. Impressive. Beautiful. _

_ Aziraphale _.

"...to be more."

Something behind Gabriel's eyes shifted.

If anyone had ever managed to drag him before a psychologist, they would've received a report listing anger issues, narcissism, and a manic need to be The Best, to the point of reacting with utmost aggression when he was not.

Crowley had unwittingly located this festering wound of a complex in Gabriel, and poured enough salt in it to make Lot's wife jealous.

"What," he growled, "am I not _ enough _ for you? Is the _ Avenging FUCKING Archangel _ not up to your standards, sunshine!?"

"Hnngh." Crowley tried to inch further backwards, but the stone altar was hard and unyielding against his spine.

"Wouldn't have thought it, not from _ you _ of all people." Gabriel pulled his face into something that might've been a leer on anyone else, and a forced grimace on him. "Way you were talking… pretty sick, isn't it, copper having a hard-on for a vigilante killer? Thought you'd jump at the opportunity to get fucked by the Angel!"

"Well, yes." Crowley admitted, in a rare moment of self-reflexiveness and insight (though it was rather more reckless than his survival instincts would've liked.)

"But… not by you. Ew."*

*Aziraphale. It had only ever been Aziraphale Crowley had wanted, clever, wicked Aziraphale who smiled softly and carried a dagger behind his back - except he hadn't, because he wasn't a killer.

And yet, still infinitely preferable to Gabriel, even though _ he _ was.

That shifted little something behind Gabriel's eyes shifted further, trembled…

...and snapped.

"NOT ME!" He roared, and then there was his foot all of a sudden, against Crowley's solar plexus, and he regretted everything he'd ever said through wheezing gasps for breath.

"I'm going to _ kill _ you, you sick bastard!" Gabriel spat. Trod on Crowley's ankle until something gave. " _ Slaughter _ you. I don't _ care _ about the instructions, I'm gonna-"

The dagger came up, high, high in the air, glinting in a sliver of moonlight.

Crowley couldn't tear his eyes away from it.

He was going to die.

Crowley had considered a variety of options when it came to last words, as one in a potentially life-threatening line of work might do.

"Et tu, Aziraphale?" Had ranked rather high, for obvious reasons, as had "I… I told you all!". There had been various James Bond lines, and "who wants to live forever anyway?" was a continuous frontrunner.

What Crowley ultimately managed was a meagre "eep", before the dagger began its descent and he reflexively screwed his eyes shut.

* * *

Crowley thought of Anathema, in a car somewhere in front of Gabriel's apartment building, probably on the phone with Newt.

Of his colleagues, at the pub and in their beds and still on stakeout.

And then he thought of Aziraphale, who might be staring at that final little "Love U", and wait for the roar of a Bentley's engine that would never come.

If there had been more time, he might've cried.

* * *

The wet slice of flesh parting beneath a well-sharpened blade.

Another.

A choked gurgle, an intake of breath more blood than air.

A third slice, fluid splattering on the dusty floor.

Finally, the heavy sound of a body - a sack of meat, really - collapsing on the ground, never to rise again.

Crowley opened his eyes again.

Gabriel Erzengels was dead on the ground, crumpled in a spreading sea of red. The dagger had fallen from his hand, and Crowley saw now that it was cheaper than it appeared, evidently no true antique; and there was not even a speck of blood on it.

And above him…

Above him…

Above him stood Aziraphale.

Aziraphale Fell, who had had them all fooled, even Crowley in the end; and who had never, _ never _ been a normal man.

There was a dagger held firmly and expertly in one of his gloved hands, shaped strangely, almost like a flame - and it was shining red and wet.

* * *

Crowley's mind was entirely in disarray, a watery solution with dissolved thoughts swimming in it, and only three managed to crystallize themselves from the pre-cognitive boiling swamps.

Firstly, his fiancé, the love of his life, Aziraphale Fell, had just murdered a man in cold blood right in front of him. Curiously, this upset him much less than it should.

Secondly, YES! He'd been right, of course he'd been right, he'd told them all and none of them had listened - well, who was laughing now, Anathema! Aziraphale _ is too _ a killer, so there!

Thirdly, Crowley noted with no uncertain measure of shame that, in this impossible situation, with a corpse at his feet and a killer looming over him, blood-splattered and lightly panting, he was quite prominently hard in his trousers.*

*Which meant Anathema had been right with one or two of her more lewd remarks, and Crowley hated it when Anathema was right.

(Mostly because she usually was.)

"Uh." Crowley croaked.

"Rather." Aziraphale muttered bitterly, delicately transferring the dagger to his other hand so he could take off his reading glasses and wipe them on a more pristine part of his waistcoat. "In defence of my reputation, this is most definitely NOT how I had planned this."

He sighed heavily. "I will trust you have drawn all conclusions readily available to you. There's additional questions, I presume?"

Crowley's mouth opened and closed a few times. He was still painfully straining against the inside of his on-retrospect-much-too-tight pants.

"You. Angel. You." He finally managed to stutter.

"Note that, in response to any and all accusations of yours, I never offered outright denial."

Crowley mulled that over. Thought back through a long line of interactions.

"Ngk. Fair." He concluded. "So… why… why did you…"

He gestured weakly at the heap of bloody meat before him.

"Oh, Gabriel. You see, my instructions to him were made _ abundantly _ clear." Aziraphale huffed, and idly filed away at his nails with the less blood-splattered part of the dagger. "He was to appear to you in passing, flee confrontation, merely prove his identity. I knew you wouldn't fully trust any evidence you hadn't seen with your two eyes."

Aziraphale's eyes flickered to the swollen side of Crowley's cheek, his chest, his ankle. "But then, he made the mistake of _ touching what is MINE." _*

*At these words, Crowley found all his remaining blood supplies relocating to an area of his body that really already had plenty, thank you very much.

"It's no great waste. You see, Mr. Gabriel here…" Aziraphale smiled beningly down at the corpse. "...was a _ ghastly _hypocrite. So high and mighty about spending policies, about laying off employees for economic reasons. He has - had - millions stashed away in secret accounts. I hacked* them, threatened to further withhold funds, unless he did me a… favour. A little bit of play-pretend."

*Oh, that _ bastard _ . Crowley had spent the better part of two weeks trying to teach him how to handle the user interface of his smartphone. _ Hacking. _ Bloody Hell.

Crowley nodded numbly. It scarcely felt real, all this. Even the pain from his injuries was a distant, faraway throb.

He might be going into shock, actually. Huh.

"I wasn't even going to kill him afterwards, not really." Aziraphale bent over him, blood hot against Crowley's skin as he used the dagger to cut through the ropes. "I needed a scapegoat, and whether that scapegoat was rotting somewhere in the Thames or slowly roasting on some island beach, oh, that's no business of mine, is it?"

"You've never… your alibis are _ flawless, how did you _ -" Crowley cut himself off. Questioning of Aziraphale's genius methods could come later. "Why a scapegoat _ now!?" _

Something very near a soft smile slipped onto Aziraphale's face.

"A dashing inspector was going to make an honest man out of me." He confessed quietly. "It seemed only reasonable to wash myself of even the last dredges of suspicion you still so stubbornly harboured. You'd not go through with marrying a killer, said as much when you proposed, so I could no longer be one - at least not in your eyes."*

*For all his brilliance, it seemed that Aziraphale could still miscalculate, Crowley realised with a vindictive stab of superiority.

He would never admit it, but secretly he doubted his marriage to Ordinary Aziraphale would've seen its first anniversary.

(Case in point: persistent erection and racing heart.)

"Oh." Crowley whimpered.

"Yes." Aziraphale looked down at him with immeasurable longing.

(Crowley'd seen so many conflicting fires lit within them, fury and ice-cold manipulation, uncanny softness, and desire, hot and dirty - but he'd never seen the melancholy before.)

"We've two options, now." Aziraphale finally broke the silence. "Hide the body. Make them believe the Avenging Angel has indeed escaped their grasp, continue the scapegoat tactic. Or…"

"Or?" Crowley prodded.

"The Avenging Angel is dead." Aziraphale said, too crisply for any defeated wavering. "You acted in self-defence, overpowered him. Terrible mess. Awful struggle."

A sigh.

"And there'll be no more murders ever again."

That statement took a moment to sink in.

"You'd do that?" Crowley blurted out. "You'd… retire?"

"It depends."

"On what?"

"My dear boy, on _ you _, of course." It was said with such disarming honesty Crowley had to swallow a couple times through a suddenly dry throat.

"Y-you would stop killing just to marry me?"

"I would do _ anything _ just to _ please _ you, Crowley." Aziraphale looked down at him with those unfathomable blue eyes. "You MUST know that."

"It…" Crowley's mind whirled. "A game, nemeses and-"

"Nonsense, you silly man." Aziraphale shook his head in exasperation. "I loved you from the moment you put me in handcuffs and interrogated me within an inch of my life, and continued loving you every moment since. You _ saw _ me, Crowley. Since that very first day, you saw my… predilections." A casual flick of the dagger towards the corpse. "And you _ wanted me regardless. _"

(Crowley nearly corrected this to "because of it", but found himself incapable of speech more coherent than "hhhnnnnbwah".)

"I've never met anyone like you before. And I will do anything, _ be _ anything, at your behest. Say the word, my dear, and my mind is made up."

"What…" Crowley rasped. "What if I tell someone the truth about all this? Put you behind bars for the rest of your life?"

Aziraphale chuckled gently, the way one chuckled at a clumsy little kitten that just did something silly and endearing.

"You won't."

And damn him, he was right.

"Aziraphale…" Crowley started.

Shouts in the distance. Familiar shouts.

Something about the building being surrounded.

Hasty footsteps.

Their eyes met.

Aziraphale, covered in blood, dagger in hand. The corpse, stretched out between them.

All rather damning, wasn't it.

"Seems the decision has been made for me." Aziraphale said, softly, and full of regret. "I do love you, my dear, dear Inspector. Do not forget that."

And Crowley lunged into action.

Despite the protests from his head and ankle - they had not signed up for activity of this degree, oh no sir! - he managed to wrench the dagger from Aziraphale's hand, taking it and slashing and ripping at Gabriel's dead body, blood splashing everywhere.

The footsteps were closer. Banging on the door.

Crowley quickly shoved the dagger under his now-sodden and faintly reddish jacket, grasping for Aziraphale's hand next.

"What-" He startled, but Crowley had already dragged him down by the arm, pulling him close and whispering "look terrified" into his hair..

Aziraphale immediately began to shiver, fisting his blood-soaked hands into Crowley's equally blood-soaked jacket, and even sobbed a little, in a way that would convince anyone but Crowley, who could feel a mischievous grin where Aziraphale had his face pressed against his shoulder.

When Anathema Device kicked in the door, Crowley truly, truly had to fight not to grin like a lovesick loon.

* * *

Bundled up in trauma blankets and fussed over by Tracy-the-medic - who was terribly charmed by Aziraphale insisting to call her Madame - Crowley gave his statement.

"So." Anathema began, even though she hardly knew where to start. "The Avenging Angel's dead then, isn't he."

Crowley felt Aziraphale slump a little against his side.

"Nah." He shook his head, carefully nonchalant. "Copycat."

The soft mass beside him suddenly stiffened. Crowley studiously avoided looking at him, in fear it might make, er, some elements of his _ own _ anatomy stiffen even further.

"Look at the dagger, it's a cheap fake. And his modus of operation - he kidnapped Aziraphale earlier, you know. That's why he wasn't at the crime scene - Erzengels saw him, dragged him along. Not the Angel's style at all!"

Anathema nodded, scribbling into her notebook.

"Neither is what he did to me. Angel prefers clean kills."*

*He nearly tacked on a "don't you, angel?" but felt this to be most unwise in the current situation.

"So he was killed by-"

"The real Avenging Angel, yes." (The best lies were, after all, rather close to the truth.) "Probably didn't appreciate his trademark being infringed on, and got a bit messy, to set an example."

"But he spared you two?"

Crowley shrugged. "Why would he kill us? Neither of us has done anything wrong."

His eyes flickered over to Aziraphale only very briefly. _ No, angel, not even you. _

"Huh."

"He disappeared pretty quickly, but I had to take care of Aziraphale first, of course."

Anathema nodded again, shooting Aziraphale the kind of glance one saved for whimpering little puppies or sneezing kittens.

"So he's free?"

"As a bird." Crowley shrugged. "But it doesn't matter. He'll _ go on killing" _ \- another glance at Aziraphale - "and we'll go on pursuing him. Same old, same old."

"Right." Anathema closed her notebook. "I'll need you to sit down with a sketch artist sometime soon, Crowley, but… I think you two have had enough trouble for today. As soon as Tracy gives you the all-clear, you're going home, yes?"

"Absolutely, Anathema dear." Aziraphale piped up, eyes wide and innocent, smile brave and tremulous.* "I'll take good care of him."

*God, why did nobody except Crowley see how delightfully duplicitous it was!? Aziraphale's smiles were an art form.

Anathema rolled her eyes - wellmeaningly - and walked off, probably to pester Newt.

Crowley finally allowed himself to look at Aziraphale, who...

Oh, bloody Hell.

Who looked back at him with star-struck wonder, endless love, and… yup, lust, that was quite obviously lust, Crowley could tell now that Aziraphale had inched much closer, throwing his blanket over them both.

A well-manicured hand, with drying blood flaking from it, slid towards Crowley under the cover of the heavy material, into his shirt, and pressed itself against the skin above Crowley's heart, the dagger caught between them in a strangely perfect manner.

They smiled at each other.

And then, Anthony J. Crowley, Detective Inspector with a frankly unhealthy interest in a certain serial killer, and Aziraphale Fell - said serial killer, and his fiancé - kissed under the flickering lights of the ambulance, far too wrapped up in each other to hear Crowley's colleagues coo in the background.

Both their mouths tasted like blood, and the dagger was constantly about to slice Aziraphale's hand and Crowley's chest to ribbons, not even to mention that both of them were sodden and cold…

And yet, it was the best kiss either of them had had in their entire lives.

Moreover, once they got home, the best shag would follow, with the very best post-capital cuddle, and the best entire rest of their lives - every day even more wonderfully perfect than the last.

(And if one or two ghastly, terrible, quite-frankly-despicable individuals showed up scattered in bits and pieces across London, well.

That was surely entirely coincidental...)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaand that's it! Happy Murder Husbands ending. And they lived - and killed - happily ever after...
> 
> (Who knows, maybe I'll draw something for it one day.  
We'll see.)  
[EDIT: I did! See ch. 2!]
> 
> Hope you enjoyed, do leave a kudos or comment!  
^-^ <3


	2. Bonus Art!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Halloween 2020!  
I considered writing a sequel, but, ah, too little time...  
Hope you enjoy this little art I did instead!
> 
> (Warning: blood!)


End file.
